Hold It Up For Ridicule

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes from Hold It Up For Ridicule. Here comes Satire - UK!

Hold It Up for Ridicule, the satirical site that sends up the right-wing UK media for the way it handles stories is starting afresh at a new easy-to-remember URL: www.satire.uk.com.

If you’ve been subscribed to Hold It Up For Ridicule, you’ll know what to expect, regular attacks on the way the right-wing UK media handles stories, usually with links to the stories being satirised.

Update your feeds and links now!!

Many thanks for your support throughout 2007, and above all, keep reading!

The government’s new Christmas Card Protection Fund (CCPF), which aims to compensate workers who lose out when they receive Christmas cards from employers who then go bust, came into force today.

The CCPF is essentially a Spirit of Christmas insurance plan, which all companies must belong to.

Companies will now be able to resort to the CCPF if they do not have enough money to honour the sentiments they sent out in millions of worthless Christmas cards.

This will end the “tragedy” of workers being left with that depressing ‘Merry Christmas, You’re Fired’ feeling, the government has said.

The companies themselves will pay for the CCPF by paying fees for each of their members, thus building a Christmas fund.

Under the CCPF, when a firm collapses members of the scheme still of working age should get at least 90% of the Christmas cards they were due to get, while retired members should get 100% of their Christmas cards.

The CCPF will only protect workers of companies which are wound up after 6 April.

Have you received a cheery Christmas card from some bastard who then stabs you in the back? If so, vote for them in our ‘Bag of Mouldy Sprouts’ award.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

The Duke of Edinburgh joked with Diana, Princess of Wales, that he wasn’t part of any plot to kill her in a car crash in the Alma Tunnel on August 31, 1997, according to a previously unpublished letter shown at the High Court.

The letter show the Duke in a new uncharacteristically warm light. He even quips lightheartedly that he would have to cut her brake cables, a joke he often repeated for comic effect while marching round the palace. The Princess replies that his letters really do show that he had a lovely sense of humour.

It had been alleged by Loopy Loo, a mystic friend of the Princess, that the Duke had been “unpleasant, nasty and insulting” to the Princess as her marriage disintegrated.

The letter from the Duke had made the Princess cry, according to her closest friend, Layla Toffington, because of its surprising warmth and tenderness. Ms Toffington said: “Of course, with the state she was in even a letter from Noel Edmonds would have made the silly little thing cry. But when we sat down, we realised that the Duke’s silly joke about a plot was just his way of offering to help.”

Ms Toffington told how her husband, Roderick Rodders, the former head of MI5, helped the Princess write a handwritten note which responded to a letter from the Duke. “Dearest Dukey,” she wrote. “I was so pleased to receive your letter and particularly pleased to read that you are definitely not part of any plot to have me seen off in the Alma Tunnel on August 31, 1997, you silly old thing.”

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

The world has agreed on a deal to tackle global warming as a last-minute plan to “let the US go” appeared to have saved the planet. Yo de Bore, the UN’s top climate guru said countries were on the “brink of agreement” over getting rid of the world’s leading polluter.

The deal signals the start of preparations to speed up a 10C rise in US temperatures which would threaten the food and water supplies of billions of Americans and drive them to extinction.

But pro-US groups attacked the plan saying Greens blamed the US for everything when it was clearly everybody else’s fault. A draft released late last night contains no firm targets or timescale for getting rid of the US and Friends of the Earth called it a “suicide pact”.

The agreement follows two weeks of insults, arguments and threatened boycotts by the US which finally prompted the UN’s immortal words: “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to let you go”.

De Bore said: “We are about to embark on something that for many years countries have been unwilling to embark on. Countries are treating this with great caution. They don’t want to be led up the garden path.”

Hilary Bean, the UK environment secretary, said: “There is a genuine will to do a deal.”

There are many people who will second that.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

Two former Yorkshire miners have backed the police over their bitter dispute with the government saying it’s all water under the bridge. Alf Tupper and Sam McGrime, of the Flag and Parrot, Mexborough were referring to 12 March, 1984 when 100000 miners downed tools and one of the longest and bloodiest industrial disputes in British history started.

Margaret Thatcher had ripped up a longstanding agreement by announcing 20 pit closures with the loss of 20,000 jobs. The Battle of Orgreave took place in June ‘84 when picketing miners were assaulted by police and army. The strike collapsed by 3 March 1985.

The two former miners later said they were fooking joking about supporting the police before being joined by two whippets and a pigeon for a pint.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

The money man at the centre of the Labour Party funding row might have disguised his donation to the party to avoid accusations of being too Jewish.

Mr Abrahams said he had earned all of his money. None of it came from unreasonable demands made on short term loans to people who couldn’t pay.

Mr Abrahams said he had nothing to do with any Jewish conspiracy involving his close-knit circle of Jewish friends Lord Levy, Jon Mendelsohn and Israel.

“The real reason I wanted to remain anonymous was that I didn’t want Jewish money and the Labour Party being put together because this is what I feared would happen. People would say there’s a Jewish conspiracy.”

Nobody is saying anything about a Jewish conspiracy, however, drawing comparison to Shylock in Shakespeare’s notorious anti-semitic play The Merchant of Venice, Abrahams warned the government he could make really, really unreasonable demands from them if ministers cut up rough.

This satirical spoof aims to ridicule the way the UK media juxtapose information to force readers to draw a specific conclusion. Does this Times article infer anti-semitism?

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

The bear formerly known as Edward Bear at the centre of the Sudanese bear naming furore tells his own story here in your soaraway Sunday Wilderness special in a worldwide exclusive brought to you only by The Wilderness.

We paid no money to Mohammed Bear for his heartrending story of the love of one child, an English teacher, and the scorn of Sudanese parents.

Now Mohammed Bear faces an uncertain future. Carrying swords and machetes and waving flags, protesters marched through the streets of Khartoum yesterday demanding the execution of Mohammed Bear. “No bear lives,” read one of the banners outside the British embassy.

More than 1000000 demonstrators in the Sudanese capital called for the bear to be renamed Edward.

Mohammed Bear’s representative Max Clifford said his client’s book, ‘School Out Forever’ will be in all good bookshops by Christmas.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

LONDON- A worthless piece of art? Or just more problems with London drugs culture?

None of the above. A huge line of crack cocaine, enough to fuel the London glitterati for several decades - 548 ft long and three feet deep in places - in the concrete floor of Tate Modern has been unveiled as a new £300 million work of art.

Made by Brazilian artist Boris Baldarsehole and entitled Pile of Shit Dope, the line is the latest monumental smack to fill Tate Modern’s giant Turbine Hall in the rolling Mothercare series of commissions.

What may not be glaringly obvious to visitors is that Pile of Shit Dope is laden with meaning as deep as the smack itself, according to Baldarsehole.

He explained that it was a statement about celebrity and the gap between celebs and the rest of us.

If you have a line of smack you’d like to reveal to the public, send us your photograph, and we promise not to get the met involved.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

FEARS THAT a new third runway at Heathrow will lead to environmental damage were quashed today by a new report which shows that it will actually save the world. The report states that the new runway, with its associated new terminal, will provide space for retailers who have banned plastic bags in their stores. Over the lifetime of the new runway, this will actually save millions of plastic bags from ruining the planet.

Fears that the new runway, which is desperately needed to reduce airport congestion, would create motorway gridlock were quashed by experts who proved that with more families being able to fly out of Heathrow use of 4WDs will drop while they’re away.

Fears that an increase in pollution might cause Britain’s air quality to fail European standards were quashed by the report that showed that when all else fails, the M4 from Reading to London would be encased in a precast concrete tunnel to trap escaping gases. Scientists pointed out that people travelling inside the tunnel will be breathing high quality air, and that high pollution from Heathrow would blow over to Germany on prevailing winds anyway so who cares.

Fears that airline revenues will fall were quashed by the report which revealed that when planes are no longer circling the airport waiting for the runway to be built, more planes will be able to fly out thus ensuring revenues will remain high for many years until a fourth runway is needed, and so on.

If you live near an airport that needs expanding, contact us here.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. It is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.

The pope yesterday said he believed Sir Ian Blair must keep his job as Britain’s most senior police officer, after an official Vatican report into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes beatified the met chief. The Independent Papal Complaints Commission ruled that it was a profound belief in original sin that led to yet another sinner being saved.

The IPCC chairman, Cardinal Aloysius Santa Maria Three Hail Marys, said God’s will was responsible for “much of the avoidable difficulty” suffered by mere mortals after the Stockwell shooting. But the report stressed that carrying out God’s will was of “utmost importance”.

On July 22 2005, Sir Ian wrote to the pope saying he feared a papal investigation could jeopardise lives. His plea was rejected as Vatican law requires the IPCC to investigate any act of God.

The report concluded that on the day of the shooting a powerful and malevolent force had tried to mislead the police. Yesterday the pope announced that certain individuals would receive “words of advice”.

If you have witnessed a miracle, such as the decision not to prosecute anybody in the De Menezes shooting, email us now.

The Guardian gets holier than thou.

This is a spoof news item and entirely fictitious. Although false, it is based on a real news item and satirises (ie ridicules) the way news items are written to convey a point of view. There is no Vatican report into the shooting of De Menezes, so don’t go looking for it. This spoof is not meant to mislead or cause offence. It is aimed at revealing how the media controls information, and it’s trying to be funny.